


Take My Hand, Take a Chance

by A_Song_to_Say_Goodbye



Category: Free!
Genre: Childhood Wedding, M/M, Oh god I'm dying of sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 05:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17094764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Song_to_Say_Goodbye/pseuds/A_Song_to_Say_Goodbye
Summary: The childhood wedding fic you never knew you wanted (and probably still don't want)





	Take My Hand, Take a Chance

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this about a year ago as a part of a longer fic that I haven’t managed to finish yet. I’m not sure I’ll ever finish it, but this section was already done, so I thought I might as well post it because it’s unabashedly fluffy and happy and someone somewhere asked for a childhood wedding fic. This blatantly ignores canonical timelines and factual accuracy for very depressing reasons you probably don’t want to know about.

If you ask him about it, Haru would say it’s strange that a blushing romantic like Rin has never dated anyone. Rin would point out that actually, he’s technically asked someone else out before, so what if he was nine years old and it was actually a marriage proposal, shut  _up_ , Haru, you’re the one who accepted. And then Haru would say something about only agreeing to stop Rin from crying, and it’d go downhill from there.

Despite the hypothetical argument that he knows would result, Rin still looks upon his “wedding” day fondly. As to how it came about, it started with his cousin’s marriage the spring he had transferred to Iwatobi. He thought it’d be super boring, but the ceremony had actually been really sweet. He even cried, though it was only a little bit, and that was because his mother started sniffling, and tears were infectious, okay? So after getting home on Sunday, Rin ran to the Iwatobi Swim Club without even stopping to get changed. It was after normal swimming lessons, but he was sure Haru would still be there anyways, so he flung open the door shouting, “Haru! Haru! Let’s get married!”

Haru looked at him with that deadpan gaze, then turned around and swam another lap.

Nagisa, on the other hand, clapped his hands onto the side of the pool eagerly and cried out, “Oooh, Haru-chan, you’d make such a pretty bride! Can I help dress you up?”

“Who says Rin wouldn’t be the bride,” Haru said in monotone, and dove before Rin could respond.

“Hey! I would totally be the groom!” Rin insisted once Haru resurfaced, dark and graceful like a dolphin, and no, he didn’t whine, thank you. Or stare at the way Haru’s back had twisted into a perfect arch, and if he had, it was only to study his form. “Sure, I have a girly name, but so do you!”

“You have longer hair,” Haru pointed out.

Rin flushed. “You have longer eyelashes!” he snapped. And it was true, Haru had always had really long, pretty eyelashes, just like those makeup commercials. “And you look more like a girl, anyways!”

“You cry more.”

“What does that have to do with anything?!”

“I don’t think grooms usually cry on the wedding day.”

“Right, right,” said Nagisa, the little traitor. He beamed when Rin glared at him. “Sorry, Rin-chan, but it’s true!”

Makoto chose that time to enter the scene and stared at them in confusion. He was coming from the way to the showers, and he was still drying his hair, so Rin supposed he’d left swim time a little early, which still translated to “way past when everyone else left” for anyone who wasn’t in his relay team of dreams. (The relay was going to happen. Eventually. Rin would make sure of it.) “Guys? What’s going on?” Makoto asked.

“Makoto!” Rin declared importantly, turning to him, “if Haru and I were to get married, who would be the bride?”

Makoto looked between them with a nervous light to his eyes. “Um … neither?” he suggested, sounding a little desperate. “Why couldn’t you both be grooms?”

“Haru—” Rin began, looking for him in the pool, then realized it’d actually been Nagisa who brought it up.

The boy in question looked thoughtful, nodding as he said, “Good point, Mako-chan.” He punched a palm with an air of great triumph. “Okay! You’re both grooms, then!”

Rin nearly went over and strangled Nagisa, but he still really wanted to marry Haru, and keep your eyes on the prize, Rin. Something very important and relevant to that goal was the fact that Haru still hadn’t actually agreed to this. They’d gotten interrupted by Nagisa, who had sidetracked them so horribly that Rin had never even gotten an answer to his first question. So he turned back to the pool and demanded, “Haru, will you marry me or not?”

Haru barely lifted his eyes up from his precious water. “I guess.”

He opened his mouth to scold Haru about his lack of enthusiasm and then processed his answer. “Wait. You will?”

“The water likes you, and I don’t want to look for someone when I grow up. It’s fine with me,” Haru said. “If you’ve changed your mind, don’t change it back later. It’ll be annoying.”

Rin was still having trouble picking his jaw up off the floor. “I-I wouldn’t change my mind so easily! What kind of shallow feelings would those be?”

“Yes!” Nagisa cheered, throwing his hands into the air and jumping up and down. “Haru-chan and Rin-chan are getting married!”

Makoto looked at Haru, and they had one of their weird telepathy conversations. If they were going to get married, Rin wanted to get in on that. After a moment, Makoto smiled and said simply, “I’m happy for you two. When is it happening?”

“Now,” Rin answered. Wasn’t it obvious?

Apparently not, since Makoto froze. “Now?” At Rin’s nod, he started fretting. “B-but we don’t have rings or nice clothes for Haru or a priest—”

“Who cares about any of that?” Rin demanded. Haru was there, and he was basically all Rin needed, right?

Nagisa stuck his hand into the air, like they were at school. “I’ll do the ceremony!” he offered eagerly. “I saw a wedding on TV last weekend—Mom explained what all the big words meant—and my sisters always make me do stuff like this anyways, so I’m super good at this.”

“Wouldn’t Coach Sasabe be better for that?” Makoto asked, glancing towards the office window he was using to supervise them while doing paperwork. Conveniently, he couldn’t hear very well from inside his office, which was proven by the fact that he hadn’t come out to embarrass Rin and Haru yet.  

“No, adults ruin everything.” They would insist he not go so fast or give Haru a ring and other stuff like that. “So Nagisa’s the priest—wait, we don’t go to church … he’s whoever marries people,” Rin decided. “If we need a witness, that’s you,” he said to Makoto.

“But what about guests? Your family?” Makoto said, and that was when it clicked for Rin that he had nearly made a fatal error.

“Wait! We have to get Gou! She’d kill me if she missed it!” because even at age eight, Gou was a terror. With that, Rin bolted for the door, shouting for Haru to wait for him and not to go home yet.

He came back with Gou lagging behind him, both of them sweaty and panting, in less than thirty minutes. Not bad, if Rin said so himself. Especially since Gou spent almost five of those minutes begging their mom for the digital camera that now dangled from her wrist while Rin stood by the door, stomping his feet impatiently, and telling her to hurry up. And neither of them had changed out of their wedding clothes, so though she’d switched the silly white shoes for sneakers, Gou was still in her pink dress with the long flouncy skirt. His fancy suit wasn’t much easier to run in.  

When they burst through the door, Rin could see that A: Makoto was now dry, B: Nagisa had gotten out of the pool in the meantime and apparently showered, since he had changed, stolen Makoto’s towel, and was using it on his hair, and C: Haru, on the other hand, had not gotten out;  _why was his husband-to-be still in the pool_  THIS WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SWIMMING

“Haruka!” Rin shouted.

Haru finally deigned to look at him. He frowned minisculely, his shoulders went down a fraction, but he got out of the water. It must be true love, Rin thought. He was only being half sarcastic.

“Okay, so now that we have Gou, and Haru’s not in the water, we’re ready,” Rin declared. “Nagisa!”

“Coming!” he chirped, throwing the towel back to Makoto with a “Thanks, Mako-chan!” He looked over the deck. “Where do you want me to stand?”

“Hold on, Onii-chan!” Gou said, hands on her hips. “You’re not getting married in here, are you?”

“Yes?” he said. It had seemed right. Haru loved water. Rin liked swimming. They swam together. Haru would probably find it romantic, and he wanted Haru to be happy. But the glint in his sister’s eyes said that was the wrong answer.

“You’re hopeless,” Gou declared, grabbing him by the wrist as she started marching for the exit. Rin started with a yelp and tried to resist, but he didn’t actually want to hurt her, while Gou didn’t seem to have the same reservations and wasn’t that much smaller than him, so she won. She manhandled him to the door, threw it open, and dragged him outside. “Get out here!” she yelled to the rest of the Iwatobi Swim Club.

Rin was fairly certain the only reason Nagisa didn’t full-on skip out was because of the slippery floors. Makoto followed him with their swimming bags slung over one shoulder, walking like a normal person but tugging Haru along like limp seaweed.

It was easier to stop resisting, so Rin had stopped flailing by the time Gou reached the road. “Makoto-san, which way is your elementary school?” she said, looking both ways before crossing the street. Mom would be proud to know she had learned her road safety so well.

“Why do you need to know that?” Rin demanded.

“Isn’t it obvious? So you can get married underneath sakura!”

Rin stopped in the middle of the street, and it took a sharp jerk from Gou, who still had an iron grip on his wrist, to get him to remember where he was and start walking again. That would be nice, he thought wistfully, imagining the pink petals spiraling down on him and Haru. He should’ve thought of it himself.

He didn’t remember much of the rest of the journey to Iwatobi Elementary School, too caught up in his daydreaming about sakura and Haru. He was faintly aware of the sound of Nagisa’s babble, interspersed with Makoto’s murmured instructions to Gou, but he didn’t come back to reality until he felt the pressure around his hand loosen as Gou finally let go of him in the shade of the sakura tree. “This is a good spot,” she said, surveying the area around them. She caught sight of Haru and frowned. “But Haruka-san, you can’t get married in a swimsuit. Don’t you have anything else to wear?”

“Ah, I brought Haru’s clothes,” Makoto said, hefting up one of the bags. “And he’s about the same size as me, so he can probably fit in my stuff, too. I’m sure we can find something to make him presentable.”

“I have a comb,” Nagisa chimed in, whipping it out of his own bag.  

The two of them dragged Haru off behind the school to change while Rin waited nervously with Gou. What if all the hassle made Haru change his mind? He hadn’t been too enthusiastic about it to begin with. What if he decided he wanted to marry Makoto instead? Makoto didn’t have a domineering younger sister who wouldn’t let him get married in a swimsuit. Ran couldn’t even  _walk_. What if—

“Onii-chan,” Gou said sternly, “I can hear you worrying from here. Stop. If he’s put up with the wedding for this long, and he knows how you are, he’s not going to quit now. You and Haruka-san are going to get married, and then you’ll all live happily ever after.”

Rin really hoped Gou was right.

About ten minutes later, Makoto and Nagisa were pushing out Haru, who was now dressed in a light blue polo shirt that made his eyes look even bluer and grey shorts. His hair was combed down neatly, though still wet. “Sorry, this was the best we could do,” Makoto said.

“I-it’s fine,” Rin stammered, definitely not too caught up in looking at Haru’s eyes. “So. Um. What do we do now?”

A few awkward seconds passed when no one said anything. Gou huffed. “You boys are useless,” she said, and began directing them with her index finger. “Onii-chan, you and Haruka-san stand here. Makoto-san, off to the side. Nagisa-kun, in front of them.”

They all went to the indicated locations, Nagisa swinging his arms, Makoto looking anxiously at Haru and communicating some sort of instructions, Haru apathetically, and Rin trying not to hyperventilate. It was happening. It was finally happening. Gou looked at them, nodded, and said, “Nagisa!”

“Oh, is it time for my job to start?” He smiled brightly and pointed at them in a way that made Rin think of child kings. “First of all, hold hands!”

Nagisa became a real tyrant with power. It was probably best to keep him away from any particularly shaky governments, Rin thought, even as he obeyed and took Haru’s hand. It curled faintly around his in return, warm and soft. He could feel himself flush a little.

He was interrupted by the sound of Nagisa’s clap before his embarrassment could get worse. “Okay!” Nagisa called. “We are gathered here today to join Haru-chan and Rin-chan in, um, holy macaroni.”

Rin nearly groaned out loud. Well, Nagisa was still probably doing a better job than Gou would’ve. At least he was trying to stick to the traditional speech. His sister would’ve gone off on tangents about how ridiculous he was but how happy she was that Haruka-san had agreed to marry him anyways.

“In this ceremony, Haru-chan and Rin-chan will … join their heads together.”

“Hearts! Hearts!” Gou hissed furiously.

“… um, hearts together in a celebration of one of life’s most important thingymajigs: love. But swimming’s really important too!” Nagisa added hastily, at Haru’s glare. He coughed, then straightened up importantly. “Anyways, we are here to show them the support of their loved ones as they bark on their new journey as a married couple. From now on, they will share sorrows and joys and stuff like that, and no matter what happens, the good will be better and the bad isn’t so bad because they have each other!”

Yes, it was definitely the right decision to have Nagisa be the minister or whatever it was called. It was a little pathetic, but tears were already starting to form in his eyes, and Rin focused on keeping his back ramrod straight to resist the temptation to wipe at them. He couldn’t start bawling now. He glanced at Haru at his right to see if he was so affected, but Haru’s gaze was lowered and angled slightly to his left. He lifted an eyebrow when he noticed Rin, as if to say, “What are you looking at?”

“If anyone can think of a reason that these two should not be wed, please pretend it doesn’t exist unless it’s super, super important. Thanks!” Nagisa finished. “Gou-chan—”

“It’s Kou!”

“—will you give Rin-chan away?”

“Hold on!” Rin objected, startled out of his sentimentality by outrage. “I thought we agreed that neither of us was the bride!”

“Yep! But I figured it’s fair if Gou-chan—”

“Kou!”

“—gives you away, and Mako-chan gives Haru-chan away. I don’t think it should have to be the bride who’s given away. Just whoever has people to do it.”

Rin looked at Haru, who said, “Don’t care. What’s it even for?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then realized he didn’t know. He looked at Makoto, who lifted his shoulders helplessly in a shrug. If they didn’t know, there was no way Nagisa or Gou would. Rin closed his mouth. That would have to remain a mystery.

Gou marched up and took his elbow in hand. “I do,” she stated firmly. Her voice was strong and clear. Rin was so proud of her, even if it was weird how someone younger than him was giving him away.

“Good! Mako-chan, do you give Haru-chan to be married?”

Makoto took a deep breath as he stepped forward. “Yes, I do,” he said, smilingly meaningfully at Haru. The corners of Haru’s lips lifted in a smile as well, and Rin was so, so jealous.

“Haru-chan, Rin-chan, time for vows!” called Nagisa.

“Do I have to?” Haru asked, the smile vanishing.

“Yes!” Gou shouted.

_Stop ruining my wedding!_  Rin nearly shouted back. Haru wouldn’t quit this far in, would he? “I’ll go first,” he offered instead, to mollify him while averting the wrath of Hurricane Gou. He swallowed a deep breath. “Haru, I promise to never stop you from swimming and let you have all the mackerel you want. I promise I won’t pester you so much. I promise to stop butting in when you and Makoto are reading each other’s minds.”

Haru looked marginally pleased with Rin’s vows. He tilted his head consideringly. “I promise not to ignore you when you talk to me just because it’s too bothersome. I promise to answer sometimes. And I promise I’ll consider swimming in your relay race. Maybe.”

“Wait, you  _will_?” Rin yelped. He would’ve flung his arms around him in giddy glee if Nagisa’s voice hadn’t interrupted.

“We don’t have rings, so. By the power of vests in me by … Rin-chan, I guess? … I now pronounce you, it’d be man and man, I think.” During Nagisa’s pause, Rin could practically hear the sound of Gou giving up on restraint as she stomped in exasperation and started muttering something about Nagisa ruining everything. “Erm, what’s the next part, Mako-chan?”

Makoto frowned. “Now you may kiss the … wait, that doesn’t work,” he said, lapsing into a thoughtful silence as Rin started turning red, realizing the route this was going.

Before Makoto could offer an alternative line, Nagisa said, “Oh, I’ve got it.” He turned to Haru and Rin and crowed, “Now kiss!”

Gou beamed at him, holding up the camera. “Go on, onii-chan!” she urged.

Rin flushed even more violently red than he had been before. He glanced to Haru, who, as usual, hadn’t reacted at all. “It’s okay if you don’t want to—”

Haru eyed him with something that could be called amusement, as if he was saying, “Silly Rin,” and Rin was about to object to that because he didn’t even know what he’d done this time, but then Haru leaned forward and pressed his lips to his.

His lips weren’t warm, like he’d expected, but they were still nice. Smooth and a little cool. They made him think of water. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Rin heard a camera click, but he was too busy being kissed and trying to kiss back to care.

After a moment, Haru stepped back and started to wander away. It took Rin a heartbeat to process the absence of his mouth. “Wait! Where are you going?” he shouted after Haru, voice a little choked from the pleasant daze he was in.

Haru glanced back. “Swimming. Aren’t you coming?”

From there, an argument developed. Rin wanted to dance. Haru did not. Rin argued that it was traditional and important, and his cousin had done it too, and she didn’t even like dancing. Haru argued that they didn’t have any music, and Rin’s cousin was not the grand arbitrator of the universe, but eventually gave in. “If it’ll make you happy,” he said, which made Rin flush again. Haru had a knack for saying the most embarrassing things unintentionally.  

Nagisa managed to produce a harmonica from somewhere and was puffing away at it merrily while Gou clapped a beat and called out corrections to their form, Makoto offering encouragement. It was awkward. It was clumsy. Rin didn’t know if either of them was leading. But eventually, they fell into a sort of pattern, turning very slow circles around in something that resembled the waltz he’d seen

Haru rested his cheek on Rin’s shoulder, his eyes half-closed, and it felt like coming home.


End file.
